Blue Eyed Fortuneteller
by quicklime
Summary: It's been five years, and what's left of the Bebop crew has continued life with the same old troubles. That is until a chance encounter brings a certain girl back into the Black Dog's life. JET/MEIFA
1. Mistakes can be miracles

*I don't own Cowboy Bebop and no profit is being made from this.  
  
I've been looking for Meifa and I can't find her anywhere. So I took matters into my own hands.  
  
Chapter 1  
  
The music in the bar was quiet saxophone jazz, noted with slight distaste by the tall, voluptuous woman perched on a barstool in the corner. Jazz had some bad memories. By her position and her posture, an observer might have concluded that she was trying to be unobtrusive; if so, she was failing miserably. Nothing could possibly have made that woman unobtrusive--Faye Valentine, 28, in yellow silk and stiletto boots, attracted attention like honey attracts flies. Not that she minded.  
  
No. She was sitting in the corner because the side walls of the bar were paneled with mirrors. Classy...and functional. Faye Valentine, with mirrors and dark sunglasses, could watch her target without turning her head in his direction. It was a useful ability.  
  
The target was not an especially dangerous-looking man, but Faye knew better than to judge by appearances. He was tall and thin, and he too wore sunglasses, as well as a neat black suit and a black fedora that obscured his face.  
  
But she had identified him positively, and Jet, waiting back in the Bebop, had confirmed it. Drug dealer, murderer, blackmailer. More importantly, worth 100,000 woolongs, and half-again if she managed to nab him before he made the deal, bringing in evidence as well as the bounty-head.  
  
"Be careful," Jet had warned her.  
  
  
  
"Oh?" Faye had murmured. "So worried about me? How sweet. I never knew."  
  
  
  
He raised an eyebrow. "Don't kill him, I mean. No heartbeat, no cash."  
  
Faye had stormed out without another word. It was entirely typical of their exchanges.   
  
The bartender-a rather pretty young woman-passed her a whisky sour and flashed a friendly smile. Faye smiled weakly back. The girl seemed oddly familiar, but Faye didn't dwell on it. Her target was still nursing a beer, and he seemed as open to attack as anyone-but Faye wanted to wait for the bar to empty. As it got later, more and more customers filtered out, headed for home or seedier locales, and if her target got a little alcohol in his system, so much the better. She wasn't much one for the quiet incapacitate-and-grab.  
  
Anyway, she'd been bottled up on the Bebop with an old man for way too long. Add to that the fact that Ed had finally caught up with her father, spent a few months mapping Earth with him before getting bored, and wandered off. With a dog and a hyperintelligent, eccentric pink-haired teenager, the ship was getting crowded.   
  
"Get him BEFORE he makes the deal," Jet had reminded her. "We don't know who he's making it with."  
  
"Thanks, dad," Faye had muttered then. Now, much to her chagrin, she realized he'd been right.  
  
The new man didn't look left or right, but sat down calmly at her bounty's table. He was tall and lanky, scarred and seedy-looking. "Dangerous" screamed every nerve in her body. Faye wondered which of them had the money and which the drugs. Either way, she should have made her move half an hour ago. She would have to make it now.  
  
But she never got the chance.  
  
Before she knew what was happening, the table was kicked over, crashing into another with a shower of broken glass. Two guns were pulled out and two shots were fired. One connected with a soft, wet thump to flesh. The other shattered on the glass panels on the wall. Most of the patrons shrieked, and dashed for the door, or his behind their tables. Faye turned, pulling her own from the inner pocket of her jacket.  
  
"Hold it!" she snapped. Her bounty-head had fired well; he knelt, searching his dead companions pockets until he found a clear Lucite box of corked glass test tubes. He turned. Faye vaulted over the overturned table. "Nice and still and you don't have to end up like your friend," she said. He was still on his knees by the corpse of the other man, and she stood behind him with the gun at his skull.  
  
"Don't get cocky," Jet had said. "Or at least don't get any cockier than you already are."  
  
"Back off, old man," Faye had snapped impatiently. "This is an easy run and you know it."  
  
"Easy runs seem to be the ones you always foul up. You're too  
  
overconfident." Jet had shrugged and turned away. Behind his back, Fayemade a rude gesture.  
  
Overconfident. She cursed Jet and his perpetual good sense as the bounty moved too fast, extended a leg, swiveled around and knocked the unprepared woman off her feet. Before she could rise, he had leapt up, and brought a heavy metal boot down on her wrist. As her grip on her gun loosed, he kicked it from her.  
  
She was scared. Her green eyes widened. She lay prone, weaponless, looking utterly exposed and vulnerable. He stood over her, with an unpleasant, wolfish grin on his face, enjoying the view.  
  
In one smooth motion, she brought up a stiletto boot and kicked him somewhere very painful. As he doubled over, she flipped neatly to her feet and relieved him of his gun. Smiling, she slipped a pair of silver handcuffs from her jacket, only to hear the thunder of gunfire come from behind her.  
  
"Shit!" she snarled, as someone barreled heavily into her. Bullets tore into the wooden table instead of her head.  
  
"Get down!" hissed the person who had dived at her--it was the bartender, pulling out a small automatic that had been strapped to her left leg, hidden below her short skirt, and returning fire.  
  
A bullet clipped Faye's side, cracking her lowest rib. She cursed miserably and placed a hand over the wound.  
  
The bounty tossed the other man (partner? backup? muscle?) the box and stood over them, the gun pointed at Faye, but his eyes watching the young bartender. Faye found herself once again prone on the floor.  
  
The girl's gun trembled, her dark blue eyes indecisive and terrified.  
  
"Nice girl like you wouldn't pull the trigger," he said, leering, and Faye found herself, despite the imminent danger and the dangerous, bleeding wound in her side, jealous. Who was he to ogle some teenager when Faye Valentine was around?  
  
On top of that, he was probably right.  
  
His partner was gone with the evidence (there was half the bounty gone right there) and he obviously had the upper hand. Faye was starting to get scared. He smiled again. "Hand it over, there's a good girl, and you two will be fine," he murmured. Shaking, the girl shook her head.  
  
Faye, desperate, tried to aim a kick at him--after all, he was probably close enough, and he ducked easily out of the way. She was slowed down, after all; her ribs were aching and her vision was getting cloudy with blood loss. Dying today was a miserable thought. 'How did Spike ever manage to do this?' she wondered. He was always getting shot and managing anyway. The thought brought back a wave of guilt. Spike's death had been years ago, but it was still a raw spot for her. She thought back on all the times he had lay in the Bebop, broken and bandaged, and how she had teased him.  
  
She was so hazy that she barely felt the man hit her across the face with the edge of his gun, so hard that she flew back, knocking her head on the edge of a table.  
  
And the girl pulled the trigger twice. One bullet hit him in the fingers, knocking his gun away and the other in the shoulder, knocking him back. He recoiled, cursing and stumbling.  
  
From a cloudy haze, Faye watched, impressed, as the girl brought a full bottle down on the man's skull. She wanted to ask her not to kill him, but didn't have the energy. The bartender seemed satisfied with knocking him unconscious anyway. She picked up Faye's dropped handcuffs and chained him neatly to a table leg. She picked up his gun and Faye's and pocketed both.   
  
She knelt over Faye, looped an arm around her waist, careful of the wound, and slung Faye's arm over her shoulder. Cautiously, slowly, they rose together, and stumbled off. She was too tall, and she tried to walk, but mostly her feet dragged and her entire weight rested on the girl's narrow shoulders.  
  
Faye remember only the girl locking up her ruined bar, leaving shards of glass and wood and a bleeding, unconscious man chained up inside, and lurching down the empty street in the lamplight.  
  
Then, barely aware of being taken in a far stronger grip and gently lowered onto a yellow couch where someone else had bled before her...  
  
"...Meifa." 


	2. Blood, tears and furniture

Notes: I apologize for the Jet-sans. I'm really not one of those anime fans who feel the need to inject Japanese every fourth word. I just think it characterizes Meifa better than anything.  
  
Chapter 2  
  
It had been five years since he'd seen her. Five years since that strange, wild adventure involving lost fathers and mysterious rocks and mysterious compasses--and mysterious girls, come to think of it.  
  
Meifa Pao was sleeping, curled up on the ugly yellow armchair with Ein. Her face was pale. Her white dress had patches of flaking, drying blood across it, and there were smears of red across her face. All of it, she had assured him, was Faye's. She had a few scattered bruises and a few minor scrapes, but she was, she said, perfectly fine.  
  
Perfectly fine. White as a ghost, weary beyond measure and numb from fear and guilt. She had dragged his sometime partner halfway across the city as the barely conscious woman bled onto her. Perfectly fine.   
  
He had been unable to get the entire story. Meifa, most likely, did not know it. Someone had hit Faye--hard; the bruise was already livid on her face. Meifa, it seemed, had shot someone--no, he couldn't have got that right. The story would have to wait. Both the women needed rest.  
  
Two hours ago, life had been normal.  
  
Well, no. Life hadn't exactly been normal since Spike had walked out that day.   
  
Actually, for that matter, it probably hadn't been normal for decades, at least judged by your average Sol-system-inhabitant's standards.  
  
Maybe even more than that.  
  
But it certainly hadn't been this peculiar.  
  
-Two hours ago:  
  
It was late afternoon, and the orange-red Mars sunset crept in through the windows and gave even the tattered, filthy Bebop a warm, homey glow.  
  
A Welsh Corgi was howling at the top of his tiny, Welsh Corgi-lungs. A pink-haired teenage girl was singing something cheery about potatoes. A huge, brawny 6-foot-2 man was in the kitchen, wearing a grubby apron and cooking instant noodles. And someone was banging, hard and desperately at the door.  
  
All of that was normal except for the banging.  
  
Jet Black wandered over, mumbling something about useless women who were three hours late and had probably lost the bounty anyway and opened the door to reveal his useless woman dripping blood on the metal stairs of the Bebop, slumped weakly against a girl with brown hair and blue eyes and a desperate expression that changed when she saw him.  
  
The relief and weariness on the girl's face was palpable, and the face was astonishingly familiar.  
  
"Where can we put her?" she asked.   
  
"What HAPPENED?!" he demanded, lifting Faye easily and placing her on the yellow couch, careful not to touch the bullet wound.   
  
"I assume she was after a bounty," the girl said. "It's nice to see you again, Jet-san. Tweezers, please. Bandages. Antibiotics. Bullet. Broken rib."  
  
She looked tired and numb, and Jet stared at her. Her eyes were shadowed and what had once been a neat white dress was stained with blood.  
  
"Tweezers. Bandages. Antibiotics," she repeated meekly.   
  
"Meifa..." he murmured, and she smiled at him weakly.   
  
He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. Best to make sure Faye isn't going to die before catching up with brief acquaintances, Jet reasoned, and went to fetch the med kit.  
  
Between them, they managed to clean her up. Jet had dealt with Spike in far worse shape after all. Meifa was apparently not without such experience as well, and he wondered at this. She cleaned the wound and removed the bullet--which had very luckily remained in one piece--from Faye's side far more delicately than he would have been able to. When he looked at her, she was pale and nervous looking and very, very tired...but her hands were steady as rocks and she worked tirelessly.  
  
Finally, they stood. Faye's midriff was wrapped tightly in gauze; there were a few stray bandages across her arms and a large purple bruise blooming vividly on the side of her face where the man had hit her. Meifa had laid a cold washcloth across her forehead--not a particularly effective remedy, but a kind gesture. There were patches of blood underneath her, striking and ugly against the yellow couch. Finally, having done anything they could think of, they stood.  
  
Meifa stared at Faye with worry in her eyes. "I hope she doesn't have a concussion," she said at last. "There's nothing we could do for it. And the rib is broken...there's nothing else for it but time and luck."  
  
"Faye has always had plenty of both," Jet said. "Sit down. Are you alright?"  
  
Meifa sat in the armchair gratefully, nodding. He sat gingerly on the coffee table and looked at her for a moment, wondering if five years had changed himself and Faye as much as they had changed this girl.   
  
"Are you hurt?" he asked, looking at the blood on her clothes and her hands.  
  
Meifa realized what he was thinking, and smiled wryly. "Don't worry. It's all her's. She's Faye, right?"  
  
"Faye Valentine." Jet nodded. "Meifa, what exactly happened?"  
  
But Meifa was shaking now, and she leaned forward so that a sheet of dark brown hair obscured her face. He only managed to catch a few words-  
  
"he shot..."   
  
"hit Faye-"   
  
"shot him"  
  
"found her communicator..."  
  
"she was bleeding...broken rib..."  
  
"had to find you..."  
  
She looked up at him, sparkling trails of salt on both cheeks.  
  
"Found you. I'm glad." She relaxed into the chair, rubbing the tears from her face with the back of her hand, smearing her cheek with dried blood in the process.  
  
Jet opened his mouth to speak. He was about say something poignant and perfect and comforting that would make this strange girl feel better.   
  
A dog barked and he forgot it forever.  
  
A pink head popped briefly into the room. "Pot-is-boiling, pot-is-boiling, on-the-floor, on-the-floor!" Ed sang cheerfully.  
  
"Oh shit! Ed, wouldya turn off the burner!"  
  
"Don't-know-how, don't-know-how, don't-know-how!"  
  
Of course. Computer whiz, absolute genius and all that, but she couldn't figure out how to turn off a stove. Questions still unasked, Jet ran to his poor, abused kitchen to find the pot boiling over.  
  
"Ed, you really need to learn how to cook."  
  
"Ignorance, do-a-dance, happenstance!"  
  
Ed's personality might not have changed since she'd first come aboard the Bebop, Jet mused, but her vocabulary was certainly improving.  
  
"At least get me some bowls? It's been a long day." Jet tipped a few cups of noodles into Ein's dish and brought the pot into the main room, where he found the dog curled up on Meifa's lap. She accepted a bowl of noodles and ate without tasting them, which was probably for the best. Afterwards, with barely a word, she fell asleep. Faye still had not stirred.  
  
Jet Black had a lot of regrets in his life. Alisa. Spike. Old partners. Lost friends. At the moment, as he glanced at the two sleeping women on his ship, all he could think of was how much better it would have been to buy brown furniture instead of yellow.  
  
Those bloodstains were never coming out. 


End file.
